First and foremost, we have a new member of the 4M Smarties! Prairie Graef joined our class on Monday. Everyone was very excited about her arrival and they spent the week showing her our routines and making her feel welcome. Welcome to the Graef family! This week we started the Living History project. We started by reading a story about Sacajawea and her help with the Lewis and Clark expedition. Students practiced the “Read, Stop, Think” strategy to read a chunk of text and then stop and think. They are asking themselves, “What was important?” and “What was surprising?” to determine which facts to record on their notetaking sheets. After practicing with the Sacajawea story, they selected a title from the “Who Was…?” series for the Living History project. The “Who Was…?” series is perfect for this assignment because the text is accessible to all students and we can focus on identifying important details. We will continue to record important facts in class this week and then will organize and write those notes into paragraphs. A timetable of the entire project will go home next week. The at-home assignments will include making a poster and a costume. The project will culminate in a “Living History Museum” where parents can visit and meet all of the interesting people we have researched!In math, students started learning long division using the partial quotients algorithm. This will look different than the traditional algorithm that we all used growing up so, hopefully, everyone will be able to demonstrate how to use it to an adult at home next week. I must say that of all the new algorithms students learn, this is my favorite. Thanks to Mrs. Marks and Mrs. Ryan for helping with math games this week!Ask a Fourth Grader….* Who are you researching for the Living History project?* What did you learn about Sacajawea?* Why are you reading each chapter in your biography book twice? * What is 6300 / 90?